The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the BBC was making all of these documentaries about environmental issues and whether we were taking them seriously enough or too seriously. And this is another one of those.
March 1971 is possibly “peak Ehrlich” and peak environment. Everyone knew the Stockholm conference was coming. There was a new Department of the Environment. Super departments have been created, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, etc.
And here we are.
What I think we can learn from this
The TV shows that we think will “wake up the masses” have been made again and again and again and again. And again.
What happened next
Ehrlich’s predictions of the inescapable famine did not come to pass, and this has definitely hurt the green cause, if you want to call it that.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thirty four years ago, on this day, March 7th, 1991, Senator Graham Richardson was claiming
‘Australia’s commitment was “the most progressive policy, I might say, of any nation in combating the threat of greenhouse climate change.’”
Senate Hansard 1439 (source)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Graham Richardson had been the Federal Environment Minister between ‘87 and ‘90 and had pushed through various useful bits of legislation and tried to push others. But after the March 1990 election, he had expected to get and was promised, according to him – Defense, and then was given it, and then it was taken away. Hawke hadn’t done his numbers correctly, and Richardson was pissed and was secretly working for Keating, who, by this time, was glowering on the back benches. I don’t know the specifics of why Richardson was boasting about this, but presumably someone will have made a jibe about Labor’s position.
What I think we can learn from this
Labor was still boasting its environmental credentials. This would change under Keating, who was kind of a proto camera, and got rid of all the green crap and stop talking about amorphous issues.
What happened next
Richardson became Environment Minister again, very briefly in 1994, before being replaced by John Faulkner. Richardson then lurched further and further to the right, though he’d always been on the right of the Labor Party.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that with the Global Financial Crisis in full swing, Peter Mandelson recently returned from time as a European Commissioner and bringing back a new-found love of industrial policy launched the first “low carbon industrial strategy with the all singing, all dancing Copenhagen climate conference coming up in 10 months. And of course, the Climate Change Act passed into law only two months previously. So this needs to be seen in the context of UK/EU/global efforts.
What I think we can learn from this is that “industrial policy” as an okay thing goes back further than we thought – I mean, it was a standard Keynesian tool. However, after the post-stagflation triumph of the monetarists/neoliberals, it was career suicide in the 80s and 90s and first half of the noughties to say it, because you would be met with “beer and sandwiches at number 10” as an insult and apparently argument-winningpoint.
What happened next
Well, Gordon Brown’s premiership was at this point, already clearly a dead duck. There was an election in 2010 and to the shame of the Liberal Democrats, hungry for limousines and red boxes, they enabled the Tories (but then Nick Clegg is a Tory on everything except Europe). And although portions of the green rhetoric were kept, it was adios to industrial policy in any meaningful sense.
The low carbon industrial policy went south, but then came back and back and back again, and a new one is going to be launched in June (already pushed back from March).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Forty one years ago, on this day, March 5th, 1984,
March 5 1984 Dickinson presentation “Global Climate Change Due to Human Activities” at Proceedings
HIGH ALTITUDE REVEGETATION WORKSHOP NO. 6
Colorado State University. Fort Collins, Colorado, March 5-6, 1984 https://mountainscholar.org/bitstream/10217/3125/1/is_53.pdf#page=14
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the NCAR had been looking at climatic change for a long time, since its founding in the mid 60s. (See Spencer Weart’s book The Discovery of Global Warming for more details). And the people at NCAR knew what was going on.
This was a minor conference or gathering in Colorado, which is where NCAR is based. It doesn’t really pass the “so what” test, except to say that, by the mid-1980s especially in the aftermath of the EPA, “can we delay a greenhouse warming?” report in October of the previous year, the problem of carbon dioxide build up was becoming well understood by intelligent, informed people. And the cynic might chime in and say,”What, 2% of the population?”
What I think we can learn from this
Is that “we” have known for a very long time.
What happened next
Four years later, in ‘88 the issue, the problem became an issue Since then, the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have gone up another 88 zero parts per million, and human emissions have gone up about 70% I guess
And crucially, we continued with deforestation. The oceans are more acidic and less able to act as sinks, and it’s all going to go tits up very soon. You breeders are gonna be full of regrets.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, March 4th, 1970, a snappily titled academic paper was submitted
Variations of the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere By BERT BOLIN and WALTER BISCHOF, Institute of Meteorology, University of Stockholm
(Manuscript received March 4, 1970; revised version May 28, 1970)
ABSTRACT
Six years of measurements (1963-1968) of carbon dioxide in the troposphere and the lower stratosphere are presented. The data reveal an average annual increase of the C0,-content of 0.7 +O.l ppm/year, while during this time the annual industrial output has increased from about 1.9 ppm to 2.3 ppm/year. Thus the increase in the atmosphere is about & of the total output. Considerations of the possible increase of vegetative assimilation due to the higher COX-content of the atmosphere reveals that this is at most of the output, probably considerably less. The net transfer to the oceans thus is at least equal to + of the industrial output. The transfer rate across the sea surface seems effective enough not to represent an appreciable resistance and the decisive factor for determining this transfer therefore is the ocean circulation or turn over rate. The figures quoted indicate that 20-25 %, of the world oceans must have been available during the time of rapid increase of the industrial output of CO, (the last 30-50 years) to explain the rather large amount that has been withdrawn from the atmosphere. Still a continued increase of the fossil fuel combustion as forecast by OECD implies that the C0,-content of the atmosphere at the end of the century will be between 370 pprn and 395 ppm as compared with 320 ppm, the average value for 1968.
The amplitude of the seasonal variation is found to be about 6.5 ppm at 2 km and 3.5,ppm in the uppermost part of the troposphere. The phase shift of the seasonal variation between these two levels is 25-30 days. On the basis of these data a vertical eddy diffusivity K = 2. lo6 cm2 sec-l is derived. The amplitude of the seasonal variation in the lower stratosphere, 11-12 km, is less than…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Bolin had been switched on fifteen years previous to the issue of carbon dioxide build up. He’d studied, after all, under Rosby, who died prematurely. Bolin had really caught hold of Keeling’s data and understood even then, I think the implications, (see 1959 Science Notes).
Bolin kept beavering away on the science, but also on the politics. And this paper is fairly typical. The findings are not necessarily startling, but in retrospect, they are part of the ominous “pending debacle” of it all.
(Fwiw, Bolin was also helping Keeling in Europe at this time, I’d need to go and reread Keeling’s biography to get the details right)..
The other context is that by the time this was submitted, even the king of the Netherlands was talking about CO2 build up at the beginning of 1970, the European Conservation Year.
What I think we can learn from this is that we knew plenty, we just didn’t understand and we didn’t want to accept the implications.
What happened next Bolin kept at it. The 1970s saw him begin to team up with Mustafa Tolba, head of the United Nations Environment Program, which was possibly the one thing that emerged from the Stockholm conference in 1972.
Bolin would talk to journalists about CO2 build up (see 1978 BBC radio documentary).
Bolin was the obvious pick, unanimous, I think, to be chair of the IPCC, which he obviously held for quite some time. And if anyone can be said to have died a good a well-timed death, it’s Bolin. He died just after the 2007 Bali COP, which obviously he did not attend because he was too ill. The Bali COP saw the “roadmap to Copenhagen” laid out. So he died thinking that maybe just maybe, we wouldn’t be entirely too late to act on the warnings that he had been giving since 1959
Thank goodness he was not still alive to witness Copenhagen.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the German climatological scientific elite, people like Herman Flohn and others, including IASSAere well into the energy climate society question in the late second half of the 1970s. Tis workshop is part of all that work.
What I think we can learn from this is that by the late 70s, people whose job it was to think about energy systems and their impact on “the environment” were pretty sure there were interesting times ahead. Now, of course, cynics will say “well, they’re paid to speculate on possible problems so they can get funding for workshops in “nice places”, and advance their careers.” And this is, of course, perfectly circular and is undisprovable. It also ignores the fact that physics exists, that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that was established in the 1860s, 120 years before this workshop.
What happened next All through the 1980s up until ‘85 you see these sorts of workshops – scientists meeting, scratching their heads, exchanging ideas, becoming more and more sure. Tthen Villach really is the starting gun, and you can say that it wasn’t science, it was the political opportunity structure, because ozone was giving them kudos. And power, social power. Or you can say it was pure play “the science”, (see Wendy Franz).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Sixty nine years ago, on this day, March 2nd, 1956,
A modest plan crystallized in meetings of experts arranged by the U.S. National Committee for the IGY in early 1956. Here two senior scientists, Roger Revelle and Hans Suess, argued the value of measuring CO2 in the ocean and air simultaneously at various points around the globe. The ultimate goal was “a clearer understanding of the probable climatic effects of the predicted great industrial production of carbon-dioxide over the next 50 years.” But the immediate aim was to observe how seawater took up the gas, as just one of the many puzzles of geochemistry. Revelle had become interested in the question through his own research, which had been amply supported by the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research and other federal agencies, whose interest in the oceans was whetted by the competition with the Soviet Union.
The committee granted Revelle some small funds for measuring CO2. The key actor in this, and much else in getting greenhouse gas studies underway, was Harry Wexler, a meteorologist turned administrator who served as Chief of the Scientific Services division of the U.S. Weather Bureau. Wexler was an outstanding example of the thoughtful officials who worked behind the scenes to identify and promote promising research, while the scientists they supported got all the credit”
Clearer understanding:” Minutes of IGY Working Group on Oceanography, Regional Meeting, 2 March 1956, Washington, DC, copy in provisional box 96, folder 243, “IGY-CSAGI Working Group on Oceanography,” Maurice Ewing Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the International Geophysical Year was going to start in 15 months, and it was going to be an 18 month collaboration of measurement and experiments around, well geophysics.
What I think we can learn from this is that scientists had a wish list of things that they wanted to investigate so they could better understand what was going on. Just in general, carbon dioxide build up was certainly known of, but it was by no means a central focus of the Geophysical Year.
What happened next
Roger Revelle was able to use a bit of spare money so that Charles Dave Keeling could start measuring CO2 at insanely precise levels
NB As per Rebecca John’s archival work – Keeling had already been measuring for the industry funded “Air Pollution Council”.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, March 1st, 1970,
In 1970, New Republic was moved to describe the American environmental movement as “the biggest assortment of ill-matched allies since the Crusades- young and old, radicals of left and right. Liberals and conservatives, humanists and scientists, atheists and deists.” In his study of American environmentalism, Joseph Petulla identifies three main traditions: the biocentric (nature for and in itself), the ecologic (based on scientific understanding of interrelationships and interdependence among the parts of natural communities), and the economic (the optimal use of natural resources, otherwise described as the utilitarian approach to conservation).
(McCormick, 1991:ix)
New Republic 1 March, 1970, 8-9.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that at the beginning of 1969 the Santa Barbara OilSpill and the publication of the Earthrise photo got people thinking about degradation and destruction of the planet. And folks who were fed up with or not into protesting about the Vietnam War and getting their heads pummeled now had a different issue. But as the quote above suggests, everyone was “talking about it”, and that surely meant that a coalition or “alliance” or coalitions and alliances wouldn’t hold. People’s pre-existing cognitive perspectives and material interests would reassert themselves.
And so it came to pass within three years, especially after the 1972 Stockholm conference and the creation of various institutions like the EPA, the “broad support” had evaporated like morning mist.
What I think we can learn from this is that everyone can agree that “something must be done”, fewer on what that something is. And fewer still will take the action to try and make it happen. Others will be content with this or that shiny bauble to make themselves feel good..
What happened next
The first big eco wave had crashed along on the rocks of oil, energy, exhaustion, etc, by 1973.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Eighteen years ago, on this day, February 28th, 2007,
2007 Nine Facts about Climate Change Ray Evans [Originally published in November 2006 as a PDF (click here, 1.5 Mb). Launched in Canberra by Sir Arvi Parbo on 28 February 2007]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Lavoisier Group had been banging on since 2000 to the partial embarrassment of would-be allies. Now that climate was so steadily back on the agenda, the old war horses like Ray Evans were saddling up for another battle, possibly one last battle.
And the date, of course, is to coincide with a Labor Party summit in Parliament House where Kevin Rudd would talk about “the great moral challenge of our generation.”
What’s interesting about this one is that senior business figure Avi Parbo, by this time fairly ancient and a major figure in 15 years earlier in seducing Hawke’s Labor Party was lending his name to this tosh. RDS?
What I think we can learn from this is that for every action, there is an equal and spittle-flecked reaction, maybe not equal, but there’ll be one, because denialists want to provide sympathetic journalists with an opportunity to do a “yes, but” story.
What happened next
Evans kept pushing his nonsense faded and died in I think about 2014. But denialism did not die, and never will.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The governments of the United States and Australia today announced an agreement to establish a Climate Action Partnership. The agreement was reached following meetings on climate change held in Washington this week between Dr. David Kemp, Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage, and several senior members of the U.S. Administration, including: EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality James Connaughton, Deputy Secretary of Energy Francis Blake, and Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky.
The U.S.-Australia Climate Action Partnership will involve the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of State and their Australian counterparts.
The initial meeting will be coordinated by Under Secretary of State Dobriansky and Dr. Kemp.
The partnership will focus on practical approaches toward dealing with climate change.
Informal working groups will involve officials, under senior-level leadership, from the Departments of Commerce, Energy and State and the Environmental Protection Agency, and their Australian counterpart agencies, as well as research bodies and industry. They will focus on such issues as emissions measurement and accounting, climate change science, stationary energy technologies, engagement with business to create economically efficient climate change solutions, agriculture and land management and collaboration with developing countries to build capacity to deal with climate change. Released on February 27, 2002
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 373ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that George W. Bush had already pulled the US out of negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol. Everyone assumed that Howard, sooner or later, would announce that Australia was going to follow this because of the 1997 leak (LINK). and also Howard wanting to remain in total lockstep with the Americans, especially after September 11. But more generally, Australia has always been a 51st state or colony since 1942.
If you’re not going to ratify Kyoto, then you need something else to soothe potentially worried voters. The most obvious something else is “tchnology will save the day.” It’s a brilliant narrative because it goes with the grain of technophilia, and because you can dismiss opponents of it as Luddites.
Here we see the Federal Environment Minister, David Kemp, who’s replaced Robert Hill, at the US Embassy, wittering about technology.
What I think we can learn from this: There’s no bullshit so humiliating that greasy pole climbers in vassal states won’t eat it up and ask for seconds.
What happened next
These various “Technology Partnerships” took up a lot of bandwidth and achieved nothing, And the emissions kept climbing
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
